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Wednesday, 28 March 2012

The 2012 iPad, Part I: A Distinct Step Upwards

ByCtein

This is the latest in what will obviously be an indefinite series of reviews of new versions of the iPad as they come out. Apparently I'm hooked on upgrading. I'm okay with that.

I recommend readers look at my previous two reviews to understand where I'm coming from with this device: Why I Needed an iPad and Why I'm Getting an iPad 2. This is not a general purpose review. I'm reviewing the features that I care about and/or I think will matter to other photographers. There are an unlimited number of other reviews out there, so feel free to browse to your heart's content.

I didn't recommend the iPad 2 as an upgrade from the original iPad (even though I upgraded), nor did I see that it brought much to the table for people who weren't interested in the iPad originally. The 2012 iPad is a different beast. I think it's a worthwhile upgrade from an older iPad, with some distinctly interesting new features.

The first is one that is near and dear to my heart and obvious to me, yet invisible to you. I'm dictating this column on the iPad. The new iPad offers voice transcription so long as you are connected to the net (via either Wi-Fi or cellular) and it works extraordinarily well, considering that there is almost no way to customize vocabulary or user settings.

In fact, even though I make extensive use of specialized vocabulary, it may prove to be a more efficient way for me to write than using Dragon Dictate on my MacBook Pro. Dragon is prone to all sorts of idiosyncratic errors, including orthography (not following the normal conventions for when to spell out numbers or write them as numbers, issues with punctuation and capitalization, etc.) I spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning up Dragon's mistakes. Apple's Dictation feature seems to get all this stuff perfectly. Plus, the recognition accuracy is truly extraordinary, the best I've ever seen.

The second big win for me is that the new iPad can function as a personal Wi-Fi hotspot for up to five other devices. Currently, Verizon supports that in their contract, while AT&T doesn't. I imagine AT&T will come on board, but I wasn't willing to wait, so I bought the Verizon model this time around. I don't use a lot of cellular data. Previously, I used the cheapest AT&T plan that provided 250 MB a month. A couple of times a year, when I would travel, I would kick up to the next highest (2GB) tier in AT&T. So I used to spend about $200 a year for connectivity. Verizon offers a $20 a month data plan that gets me a gigabyte per month, but it's going to save me money. A lot of the times when I travel I have to pay for Wi-Fi at a hotel for my MacBook Pro. I will not have to do that in the future, so I expect I'll save something on the order of $75 a year, along with getting about twice as much data on the iPad as I was getting the old way.

Now, about the display, which I know you've been wondering when I would get to. I did not order a new iPad in advance for the simple reason that while more pixels are nice (and the new iPad has plenty more), I'm a lot more concerned with pixel quality than with quantity. I bought my original iPad (see my first column) because I could use it as a near-studio-quality monitor in the field. If the new iPad compromised tone or color quality in any way it was likely to be a fail for me, no matter how attractive it seemed otherwise.

Well, quite the opposite! The new iPad display is better in every respect. Not only does it offer twice the resolution, which certainly is wonderful to behold, it renders exactly 100% of sRGB color space, in comparison with 70% on the old iPad. Apple has also tweaked the contrast, so the contrast curve is also now a perfect match for standard sRGB; previously it was too high. It's also slightly warmer than the old iPad's display, which was a little bit cooler than standard D65. Consequently, right out of the box, the new iPad display looks fabulous. After running it through a custom profiling in Air Display with ColorMunki, it looks even better. I am a very happy camper.

And, yes, all those extra pixels are really, really nice when reading the morning paper.

There are significant downsides to the display. The power consumption is way up on this model of the iPad, which means the standard 10W charger takes considerably longer to bring the unit to a full charge. Think something like six and half hours. With the old iPad, giving it a one-hour "quickie" over lunch would get you through the rest of the work day. No more of that (sigh). The additional power consumption also means that the unit charges extremely slowly or not at all if you are using it while it's plugged into the charger. Finally, run life is now most dependent upon screen brightness rather than CPU usage. At maximum brightness, the runtime is barely six hours. It still remains 10 hours or more at more normal brightness levels, but this is of concern if you're trying to work in extremely bright light or outdoors.

There are also some important, possibly unexpected, implications for photographers. I'll cover those next week, along with my review of the new iPad's camera.

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

If you are concerned about certain three-letter agencies catching something inappropriate that you've spoken or written, e-mail is entirely out. Data-mining of e-mail is so easy, unless you use encryption, that it's not even close to a state-of-the-art problem. As, for that matter, are telephones. Those folks had general-purpose voice recognition operating back in the 1970's. (The computing resources thrown at the problem were astonishing. I have a journal reference somewhere in my files, but I can't find it at the moment, unfortunately. Predates my electronic filing system.) You can imagine what they can do today.

The reality is that if you're concerned about Big Brother monitoring your communications, and you may very well have reason to be, voice transcription via the cloud is lesser amongst your worries.

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Dear Daniel,

For reasons I don't understand, calibrating iPads seems to be hinky business. Some tools work, some don't.

Understand that you're only talking about doing calibration in a tethered environment, where another computer is controlling the iPad's display. There is no way that I know of to go in and alter the LUT in the iPad directly. I don't know if it's prohibited in Apple's API and/or sandboxed out of reach of third-party software, or if it's simply not a job that any of the color calibration companies have tackled yet.

If someone reading this knows of a product that can be used to profile The iPad directly, I'd be very interested in learning about it.

Right out-of-the-box, the new iPad is so close to sRGB-compliant that you ought to be able to use it happily without calibration. It just looks a little bit sweeter if you do. But if ColorMunki had been broken on it, I'd still be happy. The older iPads, with their 70%-of-gamut, lower saturation, and increased-contrast-to-partially-compensate-for-that showed a substantial improvement with calibration.

Ctein, ultimately the resolution is good. I think I'm just grumpy about how difficult the web has become and how expensive it is for my clients who don't have the resources. I realize there are a lot of people out there who find this "fun" but I always hoped the web would reach a point where development and deployment would get out of the way. This is, of course, the typical utopic vision of technological progression and one I should be old and wise enough to realize is foolish.

At the moment the methods for serving hi-res content efficiently (when needed) and the network (at least in North America) to deliver it just aren't there.

Ctein - Did you have any of the color temp issues others have reported where the screen gets hundreds of degrees warmer over time? Supposedly this is due to some kind of curing of the panel, but I wonder how consistent that makes the gamut and calibrate-ability across multiple devices.

Ctein, when you say charging takes longer with the standard 10W charger, do you know if there are stronger chargers that are compatible with the new iPad? I know Apple makes several difference chargers, of different "strengths," but I don't know if there are compatibility issues.

You're right! With the product name change, I should change my sig. line. Real soon now.

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Dear David,

There have been a modest number of complaints (remember how many millions of these have been sold). Half the complaints are from people who are simply comparing the new iPad to the old one and other portable devices they have and are complaining because it looks a lot warmer than all of them. They're simply wrong... Or more accurately, all their old devices are wrong; it's the new one that is correct. A small percentage of people have had the ostensible “glue curing” situation. Their iPads stabilize in a matter of days. A very small number of people have honest-to-God defective iPad screens, and for them this whole conversation is irrelevant.

In any case, one of the reasons your color management hardware and software recommends read profiling your display regularly is because it is presumed that displays aren't long-term constant. Doesn't matter what kind of display, that's the default assumption.

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Dear JC,

That is a question of considerable interest. I have no doubt that at this very moment the hardware hackers are ripping apart new iPads to figure out if they can handle a higher wattage charger (and if it will void Apple warranty to do so). Could be as easy as simply feeding 15 W into the input port instead of 10. Could be as difficult as the internal circuitry of the iPad really can't support that much power.

We will find out very quickly, I am positive.

If a high-powered charger is possible, I strongly suspect we will see one from Apple offered as an accessory. I think they underestimated how negatively people would receive the charging time changes (and the lack of ability to effectively recharge while you're using the iPad).

Currently, 10 W is the biggest charger Apple sells, and, indeed, a few folks have made the mistake of trying to charge their new iPads off of their iPod or iPhone charger and discovered that it takes an ungodly long time. There even seems to be an issue with the connector cable. If you get a new iPad, you definitely want to be charging it using the charger AND cable provided with the iPad.

To me the iPhone and now the iPad is all about the Apps. The Apps I use are photography related but I imagine it to be the same for iPad users who are not photographers. Having started a correspondence with several App developers early on I have great respect for their abilities to deliver such capable Apps within a limited computational space. For that reason I am always excited to upgrade my iPhone and now my iPad. The increasing capabilities of the devices brings with it increasing capabilities in the Apps. It's all about the Apps.

"All about the apps... "
Remember when the first hard drives came out for home and business computers? The first one I had was a whopping 10MB! Back then code writing skills included how few lines of code one could accomplish the task with.
Deja vu!

Gawd, I really wish the iPad Dictation worked as well for this poor Dane as it does for this guy. I could really use it, and it seems a cruel twist of fate that an accent so slight that it hardly ever bothers humans, is a fatal stumbling block for this dumb software!

Not sure where you live or travel to, but if it's major urban areas, then forget the two big oligarchs of telecom and go with a Clear. You can get unlimited 4G wifi hotspot that will fit in your pocket, lasts for about 6 hours unplugged for a monthly fee of about $50. It's fast enough if you get a strong signal where you live that you can replace your internet provider. That is if no one else needs the internet in your home when you travel.

Can you tell us a little more about hotspot plans? Last time I checked the ATT and Verizon plan lists, it looked like they both allowed hotspot functionality only with their most expensive plan, although I wasn't scrutinizing the details too carefully. What exact Verizon plan are you using here?